Dear Friend,

Thank you for sending your story (published below). You have been through a lot in your life. I am so happy to read you are now well on the way towards recovery after being depressed for a long time due to these unfortunate events. You write very well and you have a clear insight regarding the experiences related to these women. Your story will help other men (and women) to recognize a narcissistic partner sooner and to draw the necessary conclusions. I thank you on behalf of my present and future readers for sending your story. By sharing your experiences you are helping others to break free from a toxic relationship. Those readers who wish to find out more about how one can help the brain and the mind to recover after experiencing depression and emotional pain, please visit page Training the Brain.

Unfortunately a narcissist can only rarely change, hence often the only option is to end the relationship, a conclusion you also came to eventually. Often people stay in a negative relationship much longer than they should, hoping they can "cure" the other person with their love. As time goes by and things remain unchanged (or start to gradually become worse), the "victims" of narcissists finally realize the other person is not going to change no matter how hard they try to "do things right". Unfortunately at that point the mental addiction to a narcissist and to the relationship has often become so strong that one's judgment has become somewhat clouded, making it very difficult to break free.

It often takes several attempts to end the relationship with a narcissist. Your story will help others who are still in the eye of the storm to see their situation in a new light and to make their decisions faster, sparing them from years of agony and depression. Your story will help those people to realize they are not alone with these problems and that they are not "crazy" and simply imagining these things, but that others have also had similar experiences with a narcissistic person. Many of the "victims" of narcissists do not even know they are dealing with a narcissistic person until they go to internet and look for information regarding the bizarre behavior of their partners. Your story will be an eye-opener to many people who navigate to this site, trying to understand what is wrong with their relationship and with their partner. Thank you for helping by sharing your story!

Warm hug,

- Maria

_________________

My experiences with a narcissistic girlfriend

Mine is and has been a long and complex experience. Please be patient while reading my account. I am now a 49 year old heterosexual male. I am currently of no fixed abode but I have lived in Birmingham for the past 15 years. 

In 2005 I was employed as a postman. I was visiting a long standing male friend in Lyon (he lives there with his French girlfriend). I had visited Tom several times before in Lyon and enjoyed my stays there.

On this occasion I was introduced by Tom to a woman called Nicole. I spent the last few days of my holiday with her, we made love, and so began the start of a very passionate relationship. 3 weeks later Nicole and I were in Barcelona together visiting another friend of mine who lives there with his girlfriend. We had a fantastic week together.

 Nicole is a translator and she came to live with me in Birmingham for the next several months, returning to Lyon once a month, for about a week, to sort out her flat and business responsibilities.

From the start of our relationship I knew Nicole had attempted suicide – she had a scar on her wrist but she would not tell me why. She would later tell me that she had done it to stop a boyfriend from self-harming and that the action had been successful. She did tell me that she had had three abortions in the past. I was 46, she 45 when we met. She said she wanted a child and I was so in love I thought this was a natural thing to do.



I remember each time she returned to Lyon I always asked her to come back soon. Although I felt physically tired a lot of the time that Nicole was with me in Birmingham, I thought I was happy. I discussed with her the possibilities of a future together and that I wanted stability and clarity but she kept insisting that she could not move her business and had to return to Lyon.

 Then in August 2006 (she had told me that she was going to stay in Lyon for the whole of this month due to work commitments) I remember a phone conversation we had where I told her that I loved her very much and that I wanted to know what was going on. She became hysterical and started screaming at me down the phone. I was shocked and bewildered.

It wasn’t until May 2007 that I found out about NPD but this as I now understand it was the start of Devaluation.

 Between August 2006 and January 2007 I went to Lyon several times, she only came back to Birmingham once in November 2006 and then only for a few days. On one occasion I went sick from work just so that I could go and see her. In August 2006, just following the hysterical phone call, I went to Lyon and she told me she no longer wanted a child. I reiterated what I had said at the start of our relationship that our relationship was most important and that having a child would be great if it happened.



At the start of this Devaluation I felt that the only solution to our relationship was if I moved to Lyon as she was unprepared to move her business and so I contemplated and discussed with Nicole the possibility of my doing a TEFL course and becoming a teacher of English as a foreign language. In this enterprise she would encourage me but would never be clear as to how this would help our relationship. When she came to see me for a few days in November 2006 she was all for the idea but in a phone conversation when she had returned she said she was depressed and thought it not a good idea.

I was so confused, upset and angry that I verbally abused a manager at work and I lost my job. Just prior to this I had received an NTQ on my Co-op flat that resulted in me having to move from the place I had lived in for 10 years. So in January 2007 I had lost my job, moved flat and was training to be a teacher while still being involved in what was now a totally confusing relationship that seemed to make no sense. 

I knew there was something majorly wrong with my relationship with Nicole as I had to sustain what I now know to be a string of lies and fabrications known as Projection, Projective Identification and Splitting and the folly of her advances and retreats which I followed.

I was accused of disrespecting her and her work, of being possessive, of being inconsiderate over her need for solitude. I was told that she thought I was depressed and that she could not handle my depression!! All of this was bewildering from someone who I was sharing my life with and was just showing me and telling me that they loved me. 

Just before finishing my TEFL course, I don’t know how I got through it, I was an emotional wreck, I went to Lyon and Nicole helped me find the contacts for working in Lyon.

(March 2007). On returning to Birmingham and completing the course she told me on the phone that she did not want me to come back to Lyon.

 Although completely confused I decided to try and find some teaching work in Barcelona. It was here that I realized that I was deeply depressed and I read a book on depression and coping strategies (April 2007). I found work in Barcelona but I couldn’t face it and went back to Birmingham. This was just as well because on returning I found out that my block of flats was to be refurbished earlier than scheduled and I was going to have to move again.

I moved to another part of Birmingham and started working part-time as a teacher. 

I was depressed and had gone to my doctor about it and he had put me in touch with a counsellor. Literally, just before moving and starting to work (June 2007) I was looking on the internet for stuff related to depression (and sex addiction) and I came across Joanna Ashmunn’s site on NPD (halcyon.com). I was staggered by what I read. All of this made sense to me and a floodgate of more specific behaviour and things that had been said was opened and I was drawn into thinking that I had been dealing with a Narcissist. The cause or the centre of my depression had changed. A lot of things seemed to make sense now.

 When I went to see the counsellor recommended to me by my doctor – I was told after 2 sessions – they recommended a psychotherapist. I had now moved again and was working part-time but in between I started to read and research everything I could about NPD.

When working as a teacher I met a South-American woman, Lauren, who was a co-ordinator at the language school. I found out that she had recently qualified as a therapist so I asked her about my relationship with Nicole and the problems I was having over the veracity of the literature. She listened patiently to what I said and just told me that yes indeed NPD was a real and serious condition and from what I had told her it sounded as if I was dealing with a Narcissist. 

I told Lauren that I wanted to return some things to Nicole (a coat and MP3 player) given to me as presents and that I wanted to confront Nicole and tell her what I thought. Lauren advised me against this course of action, advising me to send the things back and to have no further contact with Nicole.



I went to Lyon and stayed with my friend Tom. I took the box of her things to Nicole pushing them in through her door and told her I would be downstairs in a cafe on the corner. When she arrived I told her briefly what I knew of her and she casually replied “I’m going to India next week”. I was there for about five minutes and then left.

 When I got back to Birmingham I went to see a psychotherapist recommended by the counsellor who had been recommended to me by my doctor. By this stage I felt like I had learned a lot about NPD but there were still a few unanswered questions such as why do Narcissists believe that all intimate relationships end in suicide.

When I went to see the psychotherapist I wanted to talk about NPD and the NPD that was suffered by Nicole. The therapist said that she could not talk about someone else. However, at the end of the session together, she told me that it was true that many Narcissists believe that intimate relationships do end in suicide!

 By December 2007 I had become exhausted and exhausted my research into NPD having read a lot of literature from both books and the internet in order to x-reference material and I had written copious notes. I thought that this process of learning would help me to get over what I had been through. I had given myself until Christmas to feel better and to put this whole thing to one side.

In September 2007 I had been voted onto the Management Committee of my Co-op. By doing this I hoped that I could secure permanent housing through the Co-op’s Permanent waiting list as well as helping the Co-op improve the housing of the membership. I believed my relationship with Nicole was completely over. 

One night in October 2007 a couple, Bill and Susan came to my door. Susan was also a member of the Management Committee. The problem was that Bill had had a noise complaint made against him by a neighbour (Bill is a musician).

During the conversation that followed, we were drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, various approaches to this problem were suggested and discussed. Susan revealed that she was also in a dilemma with an old boyfriend who she claimed was harassing her for money he claimed he had lent to her so that they could go on holiday together and that she was frightened by this man’s threatening behaviour. 

Bill and I both suggested that if this person’s behaviour was truly violent and threatening that Susan should report this to the Police. Almost exactly a year later I had a knock on the door one Sunday morning. It was the Police advising me to have no further contact with Susan (October 2008).

How did this happen? 

I started a relationship with Susan on the 27th December 2007. After the meeting with Bill and Susan, Susan would come around to my flat regularly (she lived in the block next door) on the spur of the moment and drink tea, chat and smoke cigarettes. This was at the time when I was finishing off my reading and writing on NPD and I confided in her many of the details about my relationship with Nicole. Susan told me about a long standing relationship she had had (with the man hassling her for money) and therefore we both knew that each of us had been involved in a difficult relationship.

Susan and I met when I was 48, she 40. She told me that she had had an abortion (with the man hassling her for money) in her early thirties at about the same time she lost her father to cancer. During the relationship with the boyfriend he had fathered a child with another woman. Their relationship, she claimed, was always difficult because he traveled a lot and that she in pursuing her interest in dancing had traveled to the States a lot. It sounded like a really up and down, on and off relationship. She said it was abusive and that maybe he was a Narcissist.

Susan would always say to me that she was torn between wanting to be a mother and carrying on with trying to pursue her career. 

The first thing I noticed about Susan was that as soon as we had slept together she completely changed. She was both physically and verbally abusive flying into unprovoked rages. Normal conversations would be punctuated by her going off on tangents unrelated to what was being discussed. If she was talking about herself she would become suddenly angered by any examples, counter examples, comparisons, helpful suggestions or constructive criticisms or any attempts to talk about related subjects.

I tried to get out of the relationship after about 2 weeks. She became very upset and angry. I was thinking: oh no out of the frying pan and into the fire; there can’t be more than one of these people, surely. 

Also I was still thinking about my role in the relationship with Nicole. I was thinking: What is it about me that I have become involved in these relationships? Also maybe it’s not them it’s me and I’m the Narcissist or having read Vaknin – maybe I’m an inverse Narcissist? When I met Susan’s mother in February 2008 she told me over dinner in response to my telling her that I was a teacher that my relationship with her daughter would never work!! 



The relationship with Susan was torrid. As it went on I confided in people who knew her about some of her strange behaviour but they were surprised. When the relationship ended I managed to ask Bill about Susan (he had been seeing her briefly) and he described her as being manic depressive. Another member of our Co-op reported seeing Susan being thrown out of a car and her shouting imprecations down the road at the departing vehicle. Still another member of our Co-op who had once been a friend of Susan’s described Susan as having issues with self-centredness.

Following outbursts of what I considered her egregious behaviour – I would tell her to leave my flat and she would refuse – I wouldn’t see her for two or three days until she would knock on my door again. At this point I would be expecting some sort of apology to clear the air. Not once did she ever apologize for all the nasty and violent things she said or did. When I picked her up on this she would try to be affectionate but I repulsed these advances and told her that this was inappropriate behaviour. This of course just made her angry.

Why I stayed involved with Susan I cannot say for sure. I think that part of me believed that I could help her while part of me was disbelieving that I could be involved in another crazy relationship. From another point of view I think I kidded myself into believing that given what I read on the subject of NPD I was like some mad scientist verifying the validity of the Literature. I remember saying to her in jest; “let’s just pretend that everything is ‘normal’. I did at times feel like I was involved in some crazy experiment. Very early in the relationship Susan described herself as being a histrionic- narcissist half in jest, half in anger. I took her out for a meal at the end of March 2008 to celebrate her birthday and all she did throughout the evening was complain bitterly about everything, the food, the restaurant, that she was in a bad mood, that I was inconsiderate because this was not what she wanted!



In March 2008 things had got better but also much worse. I had started teaching again but Nicole had texted me and started sending me emails. The first text she sent was asking me if I was still in Birmingham. I found out subsequently that she was in Birmingham visiting a friend and wanted to meet me. She said she had been wandering the streets looking for me. Her first email referred to a David Gray song I liked and that when she heard it, the song always reminded her of me.



I like a fool became involved in the correspondence when now I realise I should have just blanked her. At first I simply retaliated by reaffirming to her that she was a Narcissist and that I knew precisely why she was getting back in touch with me and that she was not to be trusted. She said that she had made a mistake and that she wanted to see me again. Before I had known anything about NPD I had tried to reason with this woman and had got nowhere and here I was reasoning with her again, when if I believed what I knew to be true I would just simply have not bothered because I know it isn’t worth it. (Ashmunn describes reasoning with a Narcissist as being akin to spitting in the ocean – spot on!)

.

I felt I had been pitched back into the position I had found myself in more than a year before believing that the best choice I could make to deal with my conflicting needs was the relationship with Nicole and moving to Lyon. Of course this would have all been possible if it was being supported by a loving relationship but it never was, wasn’t now and was never going to be!! All of this was much worse because now I had Susan to contend with.

Just after the birthday dinner with Susan I asked my Co-op for a transfer on the basis that I was having trouble with a neighbour. I was told by my Co-op that they could not grant my request without a written complaint. I tried to explain that I didn’t want to do this because of the sensitive and personal nature of the matter (I did not name Susan) but the Co-op wouldn’t help. I asked again in April and in May but they still refused to help.

 At the end of May, Susan and I were supposed to be going to Florence for the wedding of her cousin. Susan attempted to solicit me for money (£300) for a wedding present (this went on for about an hour and a half) before I finally established that there was in fact a wedding present list held at a large department store in Birmingham.

Because I was working I couldn’t get the time off work to go with Susan for the outward leg of the journey although the tickets had been bought 3 months ago to get the cheapest deal and so I asked Susan to let me have my ticket so that I could check the details of the flights and make arrangements to join her a few days later. This caused the most weird and irrational outburst from Susan and for several days she refused to give me the ticket accusing me of thinking her a liar and of not having booked the flight! 

At about the same time I had started to cave-in to the emails of Nicole and started to believe wrongly that she was being sincere. I had just had to take 3 days off work following an incident with Susan where she had locked me in her flat and refused to let me return to my own flat. Yes bizarre.

Looking back at it all now I can see that I was under so much duress that I just wasn’t thinking straight at all. I was also comparing the two women and thinking that Nicole was never as crazy as Susan maybe I got it all wrong. With Susan going to Florence this would have been another point at which the relationship could have been ended. Instead in the gap between Susan’s departure and my going out to join her a few days later I invited and Nicole came to stay with me for a night in Birmingham. When she had returned I told her that I thought I still loved her but that it would never work out. She concurred. I then went to Florence. When I arrived I spent the day with Susan traipsing around Florence looking for a homeopathic dentist with whom she had an appointment. She blamed me for this saying that I should have arrived on another day.

When we finally got back to her Mum’s flat, Susan again became angry with me for some unknown reason and again slapped me across the face, flouncing off to her bedroom. I told her I was going to leave and stay with a friend in the City so she locked the front door and refused to let me go. 

Things got worse the next day when as an act of antagonism, I texted Nicole saying that she was right that Florence was indeed a beautiful city. I received a volley of texts accusing me of everything under the sun although I had told Nicole about Susan. Nicole was accusing me of being unfaithful.



Worse was to follow as Susan got hold of my mobile and read the texts from Nicole. When we got back to Birmingham Susan accused me of sleeping with Nicole, which was true and after first denying this, I admitted it but that she, Susan, had forced me to do this (this of course was not really true). From that point on it was the end of my relationship with Susan as she would tell me later on in October. For the next two weeks Susan went awol, didn’t answer her phone and refused to answer the door although she told me later that she was often in when I knocked. I knew she was around because of opened and closed windows but I just thought I was unlucky in not catching her in.

It was around this time that she would have been putting on a show with her adult education dance class so I guessed she was involved in that. 

We carried on sleeping with each-other but less often. On one occasion she told me quite brazenly that she wanted to sleep with a couple of 23 year olds, later explained as a revenge for my having slept with Nicole. She picked up some of my teaching materials one night and with a dismissive gesture said: “well I suppose it is a little bit creative”. On another occasion which again precipitated me having to take time off work she locked me in the flat again refusing to let me go until 3:00am. (Stockholm syndrome?! I can laugh about it now!?).



The encounters became more stormy until there were nights of screaming and shouting and knocks on the walls from agitated neighbours. I had never hit a woman before but on one night, after having been slapped I retaliated by slapping her back hard across the face and sending her glasses flying. I felt mortified. Soon after this I grabbed her, forced her onto the settee, pinning her arms and putting my hand over her mouth. I told her to listen to me to stop endlessly talking, avoiding questions and deliberately changing the subject. Biting and scratching, Susan fought me off, screaming: “You raped me”. I left and the next day the Police were on my doorstep.

At the beginning of November I went to Lyon and of course got exactly what I bargained for from Nicole. By this stage I had been to see my doctor suffering from chronic diahorrea, I wasn’t eating and I was losing weight. All of this became worse on my return. 

When I was in Lyon, Nicole told me a story about how when she was in Lyon there was a bloke she really fancied and when they used to meet occasionally in the street they would end up going to bed together. She said she was so attracted to this man that she would follow him around and then she decided to move into the area in which he lived. She said she would hang around close to where he lived so that she could meet him more often. One day he sat her down and explained that as much as he liked her and seeing her occasionally he didn’t want her to be part of his life. This is what she was telling me – she didn’t want me to be part of her life.

I asked her if she knew what a crime passionel was. In the last two days in Lyon she said to me that she was so intimidated by me that she was terrified of being in the flat with me.

 When I got back to Birmingham my physical condition deteriorated rapidly to the point where I could no longer face eating at all. I was drinking two pots of coffee and smoking about 10 cigarettes in the first hour of the day. Finally on the 27th November I woke to realise that I had had a nervous breakdown. I lay in bed unable to move my body wracked with anxiety and my mind racing out of control, tears running uncontrollably.

On the Monday I managed to get to the doctor and she sent me up to the hospital where I was seen by a psychiatrist. He said that I was just like the man who has a hole outside his front-door and each morning walks into it rather than walking around it. He told me to pull myself together and stop smoking, go home to see my parents and that everything would be ok. On the Wednesday I went to see Jack, my counsellor, who I had been seeing for the past month and on the Thursday I left Birmingham for my parents. 

Here I was assessed by the doctor and was put on anti-depressants and valium and signed off work for three months with clinical depression.

I am still taking the anti-depressants but I refused to take the valium. In the first week of December 2008 my brother drove me back up to Birmingham where I was assessed by the clinic. I told them the whole story and they were happy that I had moved out of Birmingham. They defined my relationship with Susan as bordering upon domestic violence. I have also been assessed in my parent's hometown by a psychiatric team and they concluded that I was suffering an “adjustment disorder”. I have joined a programme called Positive Steps that is based on CBT and I should be starting lessons in the near future. I have regained some physical strength and I believe that my imagination, feelings, thoughts and emotions are coming back into balance.

My Understanding of NPD through Reading and Experience

On reading and re-reading Joanne Ashmunn’s site everything seemed clear enough but the more I read there were certain questions that arose for which there seemed no answers and this for someone in emotional turmoil is most distressing. Reading ‘Malignant Love’ by Sam Vaknin made things even more complex because here was a self-confessed Narcissist writing on NPD and it is very difficult to disambiguate the subjective statements from the more objective accounts he makes.

My confusion over the veracity of the Literature was a constant companion. I find in particular Vaknin’s distinction of the ‘somatic’ and ‘cerebral’ Narcissist quite tricky to understand clearly and then there is his whole taxonomy and sub-sets of narcissistic types which is also very confusing plus the ideas of an “inverse” and “classic” Narcissist. The reason I did so much reading from different sources was to x-reference the material as much as possible to find some kind of clarity.

Unanswerable questions

Is there an underlying structure (personality disorder) that manifests in symptoms and/or do the symptoms affect the underlying structure? This question revolves around the notion also of genetic predisposition; nature V nurture. 

What is important here is the attitudes that emerge from these arguments, for example some argue that NPD is an irremediable condition whereas others argue (psychodynamic therapists) that progress and improvement can be made with NPD sufferers. Some writers make no distinction between the NPD sufferer and those suffering a Narcissistic Injury.

One writer annoyed the hell out of me by stating that the best way of getting out of a Narcissistic depression was by pretending or feigning interest in others. The reason I was so vexed by this is that NPD sufferers do far more than pretend, they are major obscurantists for reasons known best to them – watch out for the actors in real life.

 What becomes clear is that it is difficult to understand the real traumas suffered by those who have had relationships with NPD sufferers and it is difficult for those people who have suffered to fully understand the role that they played in the relationship. I for one was turned inside out by my experiences, resulting in feeling some of the most unbearable emotions I have ever felt. This is because I invested a huge amount of myself into my relationship with Nicole. 

It is far more realistic for a therapist to believe that an NPD sufferer can be turned around and that the best approach to progress is an attitude of sympathy. It is totally understandable that the ‘victims’ of Narcissists find this very difficult to accept given the hell they go through.

I was filled with anger, bitterness; envy, jealousy, notions of revenge, inexplicable violent emotions etc. that for me culminated in a total breakdown. When one has been another’s lover but then had that so systematically tarnished it is little wonder that people end up hurt and confused. Time passes quickly, things change quickly but the confusion resulting from the relationship with a Narcissist takes a long time to clear. I am not my ex-girlfriends therapist and neither can I ever be their friends again. However I do believe that from my experience NPD sufferers are so crippled that some of what they say and do is indeed beyond their own control and my concluding attitude, despite my experience is one of sympathy.

In my estimation both Nicole and Susan were highly sexed (addicts or given to addiction). Nicole drank far too much alcohol for a ‘normal’ woman. Susan rarely if ever drank alcohol but said she had been involved in a relationship with a heroin addict and was drawn to men who smoke marijuana. 

Both Nicole and Susan’s closest friends are homosexual men.

 As a translator, Nicole was a workaholic. For her it was incredibly important to go out and socialise as she spent long hours alone. This consisted of eating out often and hanging out in bars. She was however naturally shy and reserved? Part of her defence mechanism was to be immersed in work to the exclusion of all else. She would say that I did not respect her work and that I did not like doing the same things a she did.

Susan on the other hand was a virtual recluse. When going out for the day to her dance and yoga classes she would cover herself up. This was a response to unwelcome attention. She is a very attractive woman. She would accuse me of never taking her anywhere but of course she declined almost all my invitations to do anything. She would complain that she never had any fun. A very strange thing that Susan did an awful lot at the start of our relationship was to record our conversations on her Ipod and film me with her mobile phone. She said she was compiling an art project on men.

 Nicole rarely cooked for herself and then only in a limited way. Susan was incredibly serious about food spending a lot of time in consideration and execution of the best foods to eat.

I’m not sure if lack of empathy is the best way to describe a Narcissist as I think that we all understand things by analogy. However, if true empathy also requires the perceived feelings and emotions of analogous experience to be understood then I would say that Narcissists lack emotional intelligence. So again are we talking about a volitional disorder or something beyond the sufferer’s control?

 With Nicole there just seemed to be a blatant, stubborn refusal to see how I might be feeling, thinking or how my actions were situated in the context of our relationship. In retrospect her devaluations seemed just rigid, paranoid statements with no underlying reasons except apocalyptic endings for her. Everything was viewed in the negative apart from her famous statement that the only person who would benefit from my going to Lyon “would be you”.

Susan on the other hand was far more volatile and her behaviour would change rapidly over the course of just a few days. Both Nicole and Susan were of course good as gold in company. When I was alone with each of them the next eruption was only just around the corner.

 The worst part of my experience with Nicole was a kind of creeping insecurity. All of the practical difficulties of our relationship she would see as being insurmountable. All of the solutions to these difficulties I proffered and developed, she half heartedly encouraged but with a suspicion that somehow they might be successful!! The solutions I was working on were for my benefit alone! When I asked her what she would have done if she had fallen pregnant she said she would have just taken the child back to Lyon with her.

As the relationship unfolded I became less and less certain of who she really was and my mind and imagination were prompted into questioning many things. What was her motivation for coming to Birmingham? One of her homosexual male friends was living in Birmingham at the same time working as a teacher. She saw him quite regularly, sometimes with me. She accused me of being unhappy at her seeing him!! What was Nicole doing with her flat in Lyon, was she subletting it? I paid for everything when she was in Birmingham apart from the restaurant bills. I remember shortly after meeting Nicole being introduced to Josh (the former self-harming boyfriend) and felt as if he were somehow vetting me. I found out from my friend Tom that he had asked Nicole about her relationship with Josh and that she had said they were only ever friends. Another “friend” of Nicole’s I was introduced to, I was later told was in fact an old boyfriend.

So where was the truth in all this? I started to feel like she was hiding something and of course there was. She would complain about her friends not respecting her and then say that I didn’t respect her friends. After driving me half insane with her taciturnity she accused me of being a depressive and that she could not cope with this!! She argued that people in a loving relationship should force each other to achieve certain things but not for each-other but for themselves. She claimed that what I was doing and saying came as a result of me not having anything better to do, that I was unoccupied!! She claimed that we did not have a project together and that I did not have a project!

When she re-contacted me in March 2008 she accused me of “splitting” on her!? Did she mean that I had run away or did she mean that I had told the teacher about her or did she believe that I had divided myself into two pieces?!

 Narcissists rationalise ideals of perfection. Reality just isn’t like that.

 Broken and fractured, their perception of reality appears discontinuous. 

Every ingredient advantageous to the sustenance of a relationship, the Narcissist either has no concept of or considers them dangerous, unmanageable and strange.

Final considerations

Why do heterosexual women enjoy the company of gay men? 
Because they are not sexually threatened by them?

 A woman describes her sexuality as more approximating that of a man.
 Assumptions contained in this statement:
 That heterosexual men talk more openly and unashamedly about their sexual experience. 
But what is the sexuality of a heterosexual man? Doesn’t this just involve a raft of stereotypes which not all men conform to?



Sexual addiction is not like alcoholism. Take for instance the example of the alcoholic, male homosexual. Before his alcoholism can be treated accordingly the issue of his partner’s promiscuity needs to be addressed. The alcoholic must either accept his partner’s promiscuity unconditionally or terminate the relationship before his alcoholism can be treated. The reason for this is that addicts, that means NPD sufferers as well because they are also addicts, never accept that their maladjustment has an interior cause. Addicts always blame something in the environment for what is wrong with them.

Alcoholism is a physical and mental addiction. Sex addiction is a behavioural addiction. “I don’t mind what we do as long as it doesn’t become a habit” (This said within the context of having a child!)

 Why does the heterosexual female NPD sufferer enjoy the company of gay men? 
Statistically, gay men are more promiscuous.
They are not more promiscuous because of their sexuality.
 They are not promiscuous because of anti-homosexual cultural values.
 They may be promiscuous because of homosexual culture.
 They are more promiscuous because of the nature of their sexuality.

Why does the heterosexual female NPD sufferer find affinity with homosexual men?
 Because sex addiction is a behavioural addiction. 
A sex addicted heterosexual woman’s promiscuity is not going to be commented upon within the homosexual male community, in fact it may even be valued and encouraged. There will certainly be no shame attached to her promiscuity and shame is the driving force of sexual addiction. NPD sufferers always feel shame and never guilt which is why they never apologize for anything they do.

On the political front why do issues of privacy have to concern us here? The truth is they don’t. Is having sex in the street an affirmation of the fact that there are no boundaries between public and private. Where is shame located? Do I need to put razor-wire around the top of my garden wall to keep the thieves out? The truth is that truth is freedom and that shame only exists in private. If you believe that money buys you privacy then you are sick indeed. This of course is a major cultural difference between the French and the English and it is why that deep down in the roots the English system is far more tolerant.

Now we are getting close to the core of the NPD sufferer that is a fragile, low self-esteem. 
Why are NPD sufferers attracted to marijuana smokers?
 The reason is because marijuana is a psychoactive drug which fires off different configurations of synapse transmissions. The chaotic thinking of the NPD sufferer is consumed and therefore passes unrecognised in the dope induced haze of the marijuana smoker’s mind. The NPD sufferer’s stream of consciousness is just accepted blandly by the marijuana smoker as just part of the high. All will be put to one side until tomorrow.

Now let’s talk about tolerance because this word and its attendant concepts are very confused in the NPD sufferer’s mind. 
When we talk of tolerance in the context of drugs and addiction and in the case of the NPD sufferer this specifically means PEOPLE, we refer to specific levels that the body can tolerate. The more drug taken by the addict the higher the tolerance levels increase meaning that the addict has to consume more in order to achieve the same effect (in a normal, healthy body). In the career of an addict there comes a point when a huge amount produces no effect and there comes a point when just a little produces a massive effect.

What is constant throughout this unfolding process is THE ADDICT. Although it might take the marijuana smoker and the gay man a lot longer to work out what is really going on the fact remains that while all the time is passing the marijuana smoker is a marijuana smoker and the gay man is a gay man. It is just something in the nature of their character. Or is it just something that they do?



The other concept of tolerance revolves around such things as ‘religious tolerance’ or tolerance of minorities such as homosexuals and drug takers. This kind of tolerance means understanding and putting up with the behaviour of others even if we ourselves may not practise this behaviour.

 The message to everyone is clear. Let us not cast moral aspersions on others but let us at least be honest, let us tell the truth. If I am promiscuous let me tell my lover that I am and let my lover then have the choice. If this is not done then love has no meaning. The worse thing in love is to lie about your nature. The worst you can do to yourself is to deny your nature because by doing that you lie to others and deny them love.

So what of the explanation of the suicide? To prevent another from self-harming? This is the classic response of the inverse narcissist. Lies as heroic explanations!!!
 
What of the story of the reconciliation – I was wandering around the streets of Birmingham looking for you. 

Then the story of the man you fancied and you moved into the area just to get close to him and then he sat you down one day and said that he liked you but he didn’t want you to be part of his life. What about Josh – the former boyfriend? What about Moshe – the former boyfriend? What about you saying that your friends don’t respect you? What about you saying that I don’t respect you, that I don’t respect your friends?

 What about Kirk? Did you attempt suicide because he left you? Did his girlfriend really throw herself from a balcony? Is Kirk dead? 

What the fuck is the truth? 

Your Japanese boyfriend left you because you would not stop smoking?

The truth is that yes you are a woman with a past but you have not reconciled yourself with this past. You didn’t want me to come and live in Lyon with you because I might discover the truth of the past and what you still are, your shame and not the guilt. 
You always want to escape because of the shame of the past and that is why you used me – to temporarily escape. But you can’t escape until you recognize love and life. The irony is that I was love and life and that I offered you the chance to see what life really has to offer because I was in love with you. Because of your injury you don’t trust this and so you go on from one unconnected experience to the next. C’est la vie. Such is life!! An existential paralysis.

Another irony: If you had told me from the start, I am a tolerant person and I would have understood but you lied to me and it was a massive lie. Never feign affection!!

____________________

If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, send me email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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